Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
--H.L. Mencken

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Intelligence Failures

Jeff Jacoby has a piece on intelligence failures and what kind of culture we want to cultivate in the intelligence community. Money quote:

If intelligence failures are inevitable — and in a world of human fallibility, they are — we are better off worrying too much about our enemies and taking steps to defeat them than worrying too little and being caught, unready, when they attack. Worrying too much led the United States and Britain to topple a brutal tyrant. Worrying too little led to 9/11 and 7/7.